ELIZABETH
I count the pills and admire their colours, they look alive on my palm, robotic beetles ready to obey my orders.
The glass of water spills in my hand when the abrupt heavy sound of crunched pebbles followed by the arrogant creak of worn step boards disrupt my special moment.
My heart flutters in my throat. The feel of fear is disturbing. Fear is a sign of a survival instinct.
I straighten myself up holding onto the book shelves. The rattle in my chest continues and I know, if there is a force out there, it sends the answer disguised as a burglary gone wrong. I see myself on the floor bleeding, the robber hopping mad because he can’t find money in the house. There’s a knock at the front door. I am not sure whether robbers knock.
I ready my phone for an emergency call (why am I doing it?) and peer outside. Another passing CityCat boat illuminates the patio. There’s a man standing outside.
That’s your good luck, Elizabeth. You are having a freebee.
The meekat might be right.
The man at the porch turns and through the window our eyes meet. I drop the phone with the second zero punched.
Unannounced, unexpected, unwanted he stands there waiting patiently.
When I finally open the door I see that he carries a box. The smell of burger hits me like a train and I feel faint.
He leads me to the sofa where I collapse. My blurred eyes follow him as he tries to find a clean plate.
He sets the plate on my lap, tips chips on it and disposes of the box.
He has put on weight and when he sits next to me the old sofa gives away a troublesome sound. He tears the juicy burger in halves and offers it to me to bite. I shook my head in rejection, the little girl I once was making a scene at meal times, reluctant to open my mouth out of stubbornness.
“I’m sending you to Ursula,” my father breaks the silence wobbly with bitterness and mistrust.
“Excuse me?” A half swollen doughy knob choking me.
My father taps me on the back. “Eat. I am aware of what’s going on.”
“Excuse me?” I echo myself , the greasy juiciness of the burger doing wonders for me gaining back my strength, breeding aggressiveness.
He cleans a crumb from the corner of my mouth. “Everything will be fine.”
Everything? Fine? My mother coming back to life? Alec undoing the pretty Chinese girl? Me not suffering panic attacks, not taking drugs, keeping my jobs, making money to feed myself and buy my own coffee?
I try the chips, the comfort food.
When did I see him last, five, six years ago? He didn’t turn up for my mother’s funeral.
“What do you want?”
We look at each other. Everything about him screams good life. I can’t be more jealous. More bitter, reeking of betrayed. My stomach rebels: the whirl of forced emotions and food makes me queasy. I am no longer in control: screams, abuse, reflux bile, half-chewed lettuce and lumps of dough and chips pour out of me. I throw up things bottled up inside me and the only thing I can think of is how lucky it is that I didn’t take the pills otherwise they could have been wasted and I can’t buy another batch.
You should have been careful not to part with the stolen coffee you drank, Elizabeth.
I don’t pay attention to Liam but continue to vomit over my father’s velvet hipster jeans as he holds me repeating, “It’s all right, baby, it’s all right.” Has he gone mellow or mad?
Some time later, I have cleaned him, me and the sofa and we sit on the floor facing the book-case and my mother’s portrait. I work her blow-drier on him as he drinks my freshly ground stolen coffee, we dart stealing looks to each other, trying to read the degree of tension and hatred, trying like cliffhangers to throw a hook somewhere in a solid rock where it would hold the next go at a family conversation. I try to manifest how much I hate him but I am so weak that my scrapes of animosity melt down by that illusionary feeling that a father can take care of everything and for a moment I wonder what my beautiful Indian doctor could say about that “comfort thought” for my soul.
Once the volatile sentimentality of the surprise encounter is gone the reality kicks in. “Why are you here?”
I switch off the blow-drier.
Anger is an easy feeling to come back. I should have never opened the door and let him in the house where we tried to live with his absence for years. I should have shoved the chips down his throat and showed him how my mother last looked with her face smaller than my palm. I grasp for air.
It must have been something he has rehearsed because he says it in a controlled and flat tone, “You need money! I could help but my wife will raise the hell and I don’t want hell in the house where my children live.”
As if I am not his child. But then: am I a child? He doesn’t need to make me more jealous than what I already am. I don’t want to listen to him but I sit there listless thinking that it might not be such a good idea to blame him for everything happening to me. Things like Alec, Manoli, and panic attacks.
“What I can do but,” he continues, “is send you to Switzerland.”
I am so stunned that it triggers the preliminary symptoms of another panic attack so I try to beat it by blabbering, “When in Bern Einstein was known as a heavy drinker of thick black coffee known as Turkish or Greek, coffee made in metal jezve, coffee that burns the tongue and…”
“Really? I thought he was known for his relative theory!”
Right, dude! Einstein was a relative! Not like you ignoring us, your dear relatives!
I can afford to apostrophe Liam and remind him that he is not a relative but a squatter in my mind, making me paranoid and mental, making me exposed to cosmic black matter and my own black holes where he comfortably lives.
“If you needed spirituality in your life, Elizabeth, I’d be happy to send you to Tibet so you can chant incantations and learn the art of nothingness encompassing everything but you have more than enough of spirituality. I am sorry to say as a result of your mother’s influence. She was a beautiful human being but you have to balance and learn the language of money. Only pure money energy can help you…”
…get juicy scorpions. I am coming with you, Elizabeth?
I can’t stand this: the charity visit, the business-like talk! Who he thinks he is? It annoys me that he looks fabulous: his neatly cut thick hair still wombat brown, specks of white around the ears, his face plump, no wrinkles, his broad shoulders, the strong arms, his figure more stocky but no belly pushing against his light blue shirt: the Italian fashion style accentuated by a navy blue pullover draped around his shoulders, the sleeves tied loosely in front. His shoes Portugal as always. I dart a stealing glance at the mirror next to the bookcase. I could have been my mother.
“You should have come to see her!”
“Elizabeth,
